


Sorting Hats and Villages

by PoliticallyObsessedScholar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Child Neglect, Doesn't roll with the Golden Trio Draco, Draco runs away, Gen, Good Draco Malfoy, Hints of child abuse, because characters in my stories tend to end up in villages, gryffindor!draco, in a village, sorting AU, spends time with muggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 16:14:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8807542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoliticallyObsessedScholar/pseuds/PoliticallyObsessedScholar
Summary: Draco Malfoy is sorted into Gryffindor and the results are unexpected.





	

For the split second after the hat called out its decision to the hall but before it really _registered_ for everyone else Draco Malfoy allowed himself to silently panic. He’d originally thought that the hat was leaning towards Slytherin what with the way it mentioned disobeying his father and his burning desire to do better - then the tone of things started to change.

 The hat started to comment on how chivalrous he was among company, how much nerve it had taken for him to sneak into his mother’s boudoir and hide, how courageous he’d been the time he’d defended himself to his father. Draco wasn’t an idiot; he knew exactly which house those characteristics matched. He’d made a desperate attempt to point out how much cunning those events also showed he had but the hat had merely chuckled.

Draco was eleven years old and his life as he knew it was over.

When the hat was lifted back off of his head he sauntered over to the Gryffindor table and pretended he didn’t see the way everyone was staring at him in shock. He smoothed down his robes as he sat and gave a polite nod to the other first years, including Longbottom who looked like he was about to faint from fear. Even as whispers broke out across the hall and McGonnagalls voice cracked slightly on the next name, Draco continued to pretend he was supremely unconcerned.

After eating food that tasted like nothing if not ash, and warnings from Dumbledore about forests and corridors, Draco followed an officious _Weasley_ prefect up (up!) the stairs and into Gryffindor Tower. It was certainly a comfortable looking space with its fireplace and reading corner. Thankfully the dormitory, while still homely, had a much more elegant air. Draco could feel at home here in a four poster bed that had a deep red canopy and gold trim.

He could have waited for everyone else to choose their bed, ingratiated himself with his new housemates by sending that sort of peace gesture, but Weasley was glaring at him with Harry Potter resolutely by his side and he was flanked by Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan. Longbottom was hiding slightly behind them, clutching that infuriating toad, and the self-same instinct which had led him to place Crabbe and Goyle under his protection at a garden party when they were being relentlessly mocked was telling him to adopt the stray.

Well, at least he was a pureblood.

Looking supremely unconcerned Draco sauntered over to the bed closest to the window, flopped down on it and then called imperiously

“You’ll take the bed next to mine, won’t you Longbottom?”

Which had elicited a squeak and a sort of clumsy fall towards the designated bed from the other boy but that was neither here nor there. Potter was looking at him in disgust and Weasley made a comment about how _Malfoys_ always had to have the best of everything.

***

The next morning Draco was up and groomed to perfection at precisely 6.30. There was no need to mention that this was only due to the fact that he’d spent the night before struggling to breathe and sleeping only intermittently. It was still too early to go down to breakfast so he sat ensconced in his bed trying to breathe. His father was going to be absolutely furious. News of his sorting would already have made it out of the castle by way of older siblings and floo conversations by Professors.

There was no way that Lucius Malfoy was unaware that his son had sorted into the house of incomparable idiots. Draco honestly thought that sorting Hufflepuff would have been better than _this._ Trying not to cry (because Malfoy’s don’t cry you stupid boy) he comforted himself with the thought that his father would not lower himself to send a howler.

Half an hour later he emerged from his cocoon to see Longbottom suspiciously just as prepared as he was. Shrugging his Dragonhide satchel over his shoulder he walked towards the dormitory door and called over his shoulder

“Coming, Longbottom?”

The other boy scrambled to follow him and Draco was uncomfortably aware of Potter’s judging eyes on his back. They were halfway to the Great Hall when Longbottom finally plucked up enough courage to ask him why he would want to associate with him

“... everyone knows I’m practically a squib. My Uncle Algie tried to drown me off Blackpool Pier one year and I know I’m not anything special really”

A statement which rather put Draco’s back up. Sure he was nervous and awkward but so was he, he just didn’t show it as much and he’d much rather have a quiet friend than a loudmouthed posturing idiot. He said as much to the other boy and watched him seem to beam with joy in response. Draco rather thought that no one had ever told him he was good enough before in his life.

It also had the rather pleasant side effect of causing Longbottom to explode in anger at Seamus Finnegan when he made pointed barbs about plebeian food at breakfast. Draco had never been defended before, he was always the defender and protector. It felt rather nice and it allowed him to forget that his rightful place should have been on the other side of the hall.

Well, at least until the Malfoy family’s Great Horned Owl came swooping in and dropped a letter in front of his plate. It was the owl they reserved for when they wanted to put the fear of their family and legacy into someone. Then as he reached for it everything abruptly came into focus. _It’s going to alright, they didn’t disown Cousin Sirius after he sorted Gryffindor, and father wouldn’t abide the scandal_ he told himself as he reached for the letter with surprisingly steady hands.

***

 The rest of the year passed exactly as Draco had suspected it would that first night at school. He was ignored by the rest of Gryffindor - unless they wanted to make comments about his fall from grace - and teased relentlessly by the Slytherins. Comments about ‘blood traitors’ and ‘little Sirius Black’ followed him everywhere he went. He gave back as good as, if not worse than, he got and he very rarely got letters from home.

The most crushing letter, however, came at the end of November. It informed him that he would not be returning to the Manor for Christmas. That was the only time his mask broke. He’d stared at the piece of parchment in his hands for so long the words started to burn into his brain. There was no real reason for him not to go home and he knew full well that his family was still throwing their customary lavish Christmas party that year. He’d overheard Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott discussing their excitement that being of Hogwarts age they would finally be upgraded to the adults table. It also told him, almost as an afterthought, added on beneath his mother’s signature, that she was pregnant again.

He was being cut off and replaced. Or, at the very least, preparations were being made for that eventuality.

He stood up quickly from the table, ignored Neville’s questions, and went to the one place he wouldn’t be disturbed: the Forbidden Forest. He didn’t go very deep, just far enough that he couldn’t be seen from the grounds, leaned his back against a tall oak tree and cried so hard his body shook with it.

This wasn’t fair! He was still Draco Abraxus Malfoy! He was still their son. He was the same boy he’d been before he left, it just turned out that he wasn’t a Slytherin. He _could_ have been but a stupid hat had decided that wasn’t true. An inanimate object. What did it know about life? Sorting into Gryffindor didn’t mean he no longer supported his family, or that he supported Dumbledore anymore than sorting Slytherin meant he automatically did and supported He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

He’d suspected for a long time that his family didn’t care much for him as a person, that all he really was was a perfect shiny trophy but he hadn’t really _known._ In fact he’d rather thought that if he just tried harder to be perfect and please them he might win their love. Now thanks to a measly minute, in a hall full of watching eyes, he never would.

 He defiantly lifted his chin and told himself that he’d had his moment of weakness and now it was his job to keep marching forwards. Despite the fact that he was in honestly ghastly circumstances he would not give in. So he stood up, walked late into transfigurations, took the point deduction with dignity and accepted Neville’s invitation to his house for Christmas.

***

As the years passed it became more and more clear that he was a Malfoy in name only. His parents did nothing when a vicious hippogriff mauled him and didn’t visit in the hospital wing when they had to graft his skin back together because a potion alone wasn’t enough. Other pureblood children would exchange knowing whispers and glances and Draco wouldn’t have even the barest hint about what was going on. Photographs in the Daily Prophet were always of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy with their son, Orion (2) - only once did the caption read _sons, Orion (1) and Draco (13)_ and that time he’d worn clothes that were too old and too small and he’d barely been in the frame.

Every year he would accompany Neville to his house for Christmas and slowly but surely the rest of the Gryffindors started to accept them. Even Harry! That had happened at the beginning of second year when the other boy had looked at his haggard appearance and slightly too small clothes and the most curious look of complete understanding had flashed in his eyes. At the end of that year he’d given Draco some biscuits “just in case.” Then, at the beginning of third, when Harry returned in clothes that were too big for him and looking dreadfully skinny, he realized.

He wasn’t sure but he rather thought it was an unwritten code, children like them, children whose families and guardians weren’t really doing their job, they needed to stick together. It was as true as the sun rising in the morning and setting at night, children like them looked out for each other. So when the first Hogsmede weekend came and Harry couldn’t join in, Draco snuck one of his school robes with him to the clothes shop just off the main street and bought Harry a full new set. He’d used his entire years spending money to do it - and he dug slightly into his families vault to cover the difference - but he knew that it was something he had to do. It was for the biscuits if nothing else. Biting his tongue, and with the uncomfortable feeling that the big black dog curled up on the steps of the shop was watching him, he paid to have them delivered once finished by anonymous owl.

Harry had looked at them with undisguised wonder when they arrived, his hand had reached out and touched the soft fabric almost hesitantly, reverently, and he clutched the packet tightly to his chest. The fact that Granger had them confiscated and tested for malicious hexes right after that did irk him slightly but he understood the sentiment. Not even his father’s tersely worded letter about Malfoy money not being used on undeserving heirs to noble houses was able to bring him down.

The summer of 1995 was the moment his life’s course was set irrevocably, if it hadn’t done so in 1991. When Harry had arrived back with Cedrics’ body, Draco had been slightly concerned but not worried. Everyone knew his father had been under imperius the first time - accusations to the contrary notwithstanding. He’d shouted as much at Harry when he claimed to have seen his father at the resurrection ceremony.

It was only when he arrived home and saw the way that his parents were acting that he started to wonder if Harry’s warning really had been just that. Then, one night when he was already tucked up in bed, one of their house-elves had appeared in front of him. It had grasped him by the arm, motioned the he should be quiet, and then apparated him to just outside his father’s study door.

Inside he heard a hissing sibilant voice talking about human sacrifices and how tiresome it was that this particular ritual required a pureblood child. Draco’s blood had run cold and hearing his father offering “our disappointment of a first-born” for the “honour” of having his bones liquefied, blood drained slowly out of his body, and disembowelled with a ritual dagger was suddenly completely unsurprising.

Initially he was just going to get himself out of the nightmare his life had become but then he remembered his brother. His younger brother. Who was going to be left in a family that would cast him out and allow him to be brutally murdered if he didn’t live up to their standards. He didn’t see the boy much, except for when he snuck into his room and played with him in secret, but he was family and no one deserved that. So he’d looked at the house-elf which had decided to warn him of his impending fate and then had him first pack his things and then pack some of Orions’.

He leaned over his brother’s bed, shook him awake, and said

“Come on, we need to get out of here, it’s not safe anymore”

The younger boy had frowned and looked like he was going to complain, had indeed started to ask about Mother and Father but then he saw Draco’s face. He wasn’t sure what he looked like but whatever it was, it was enough. Orion had quieted, grasped his brother with one hand and his stuffed crup with another, and allowed himself to be apparated away by a house-elf.

***

Draco wasn’t able to return to Hogwarts for his fifth year, he had a three year old child to look after, not to mention the fact that he was in hiding. He’d been able to relocate to a muggle village in Scotland, where he spun a tragic story of his parents having died in an accident, taken a job at the local pub, and set about raising Orion himself. That wasn’t easy, a couple of months after they’d left Orion had seen a headline in the Daily Prophet (which Draco had delivered under a pseudonym) about his kidnapping and demanded an explanation.

Which had placed him in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain something to a very young child when he couldn’t, as a point of fact, actually explain it. He’d settled for saying that his parents had met a very bad man who wanted to do very bad things to Draco, so Draco had decided to protect them both. Orion’s gray eyes and frowned up at him for a long time and then he’d asked if it had something to do with the way he wasn’t allowed to mention he had a brother and the way Draco always walked like he was pain. Draco had nodded and then Orion had looked with eyes far too knowing, said “mother and father are bad people too aren’t they?” and turned away before Draco could answer.

They’d lived like that for the next three years, until the Daily Prophet had arrived with streamers and honest to Merlin fanfare to declare in multicoloured flashing letters that Voldemort had been defeated. When Orion had woken up and met him down in the pub for breakfast, Draco had picked him up and spun him around laughing the whole time. The villagers had looked on bemusedly and Mrs Whittaker had said that “it was about time he loosened up.” Still he wasn’t ready to take them back into the Wizarding World, his father had after all successfully manoeuvred his way out of prosecution the last time around.

Capturing Death Eater and Death Eater sympathisers who had fled the battle, and coverage of their trials, took the rest of the year and unfortunately Orion was now old enough to get a simplified explanation of what that meant. He’d sat his younger brother down on his bed and explained about blood purity and that the bad man they’d fled from had been the leader of a movement that would kill to enforce it. He’d sat there hugging his knees, trying not to cry, as his younger brother slipped silently down the road to get him a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream (“it always makes me feel better”).

When he went into work the next day Mr Howard, had asked him if he was alright. He only worried because “the young ‘un came in here in a right state yesterdee, worried about you.” Draco had smiled and said that it was a difficult day for him and everyone listening had nodded understandingly before showing up at his small house that night with precooked dinners.

Things continued in their self-same manner for a couple more weeks until the day that Lucius Malfoy was asked under Veritaserum what he had happened to his oldest son. It was only thanks to that loose terminology that everything had come out. That his father had started to rant and rave about how he’d betrayed them with their sorting, about how they’d treated him afterwards to try and get him to grovel at their feet and beg forgiveness, about how they’d planned to use him, about how they knew he’d somehow found out because “there were things missing,” and about the tortures he’d have been exposed to if he was recaptured.

The Daily Prophet had devoted its entire issue the following day to document “The Tragic Life of the Malfoy Constellations”. Augusta Longbottom had been quoted liberally and his “close-friendship” with the Boy-Who-Saved-Us-All, Harry Potter, had been mentioned almost every other sentence. Feeling vaguely sickened by the entire display, Draco had thrown the newspaper out without finishing it.

That evening he’d just settled Orion at a table with a book, a bowl of chips, and a tall glass of coke “as a treat” when the door opened and two strangers walked in. Draco hadn’t paid them much mind initially, the dinner rush was just about to begin after all, but then they’d walked right up to Orion. Draco only saw it out of the corner of his eye but in a flash he’d dropped the plate he’d been carrying on the floor and then flung himself bodily in front of his brother.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

They’d held up their hands placatingly and then asked if they could sit down. Hesitating, Draco made eye contact with Farmer Brown and Father MacDougal - both of whom moved to stand in front of the door. The village was gearing up to protect them. Just like they always had before. Relaxing slightly he nodded and then watched as they sat down across from Orion before gesturing that he too should sit.

Cautiously, hesitantly, he did so and then listened to a muggle friendly version of events.

“Mr Malfoy, my name is Arnold Jones and this is my partner, Constance Summerfield. We’re the _police_ who were assigned to your case. As you might be aware your parents and their...” a brief pause followed as Jones attempted to find the right word “associates were arrested and convicted for their crimes.”

Draco nodded acutely aware of the fact that every ear in the pub was listening to their conversation. The village had started to suspect that he wasn’t telling the whole truth a year after their arrival when Draco had slipped and mentioned the accident his father died in rather than his parents. Still, by that point they’d been practically adopted into the village so nothing was done about it.

The aurors continued to talk about how they’d acted on information gained during the trial and questioned the “staff” before gaining timid information on how they’d helped them escape and where they’d hidden them. The villagers were openly staring now and Draco knew that he’d replaced the time that Dorothy Perkins had accidentally let all her cows out of the paddock and one wandered into the pub as the “most exciting thing to happen here.”

“...the Manor is all yours, the law is clear on that point, you weren’t declared dead and you weren’t disinherited. We’ll be looking into ways that you can continue your education as well. We’ll keep in touch with you and obviously people need to be told that you’ve been found.”

Then they’d stood up, nodded to Farmer Brown and Father MacDougal as they exited, and left.

***

To say Draco was scared to return to the magical world was an understatement. He was famous, properly famous. There were letters in the Daily Prophet calling for him to receive a bravery award (even though the brave thing he’d done was run away). The Boy-Who-Saved-Us-All had nearly attacked a reporter who insinuated that he was a coward and Hermione Granger had verbally eviscerated him.

In one particularly informative issue of the Daily Prophet it had emerged that during his fifth and sixth years, Neville Longbottom had started a campaign and made badges to try and prompt the ministry to arrest and question the Malfoy parents about his so-called kidnapping. He’d managed to recruit all of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff and most of Ravenclaw to his cause. To Draco’s great surprise he’d even been joined in his crusade by Blaise Zabini who’d written a scathing letter to the Daily Prophet about the shoddy investigative work of the ministry (he’d made broad references to his mother throughout).

Then when Theodore Nott was found and brought into the ministry he’d confessed under Veritaserum that he’d been deliberately ineffectual as a Death Eater but hadn’t outright refused to join because he was scared to end up as another Draco Malfoy. This had turned out to be true of all the other Death Eater children, they’d been utterly terrified for their lives and thought they had no choice but to obey. No one who was able to say that went to Azkaban.

So to say Draco was scared to return to a world where he probably wouldn’t get a moments peace was an understatement. Yet Orion had been living in a bubble of pure excitement since the aurors came. He wanted to go back to Diagon Alley, he wanted to meet Draco’s friends, he wanted to make his _own_ friends. He wanted to drink butterbeer again (“but also coke, because coke is yum!”). He wanted to see the portraits and the house-elves and read all of the books in the library.

Then one night he slipped into Draco’s room and said that he wanted his older brother to have a future again

“I’m not stupid. I know if you didn’t bring me you could have done more as a muggle. You could have gone to school and then uni... uni-v-er-city... but you brought me too. I want you to have your life back”

Then he’d slipped out as silently as he came and Draco got up to pack his things.

Their return to the magical world was as excruciating as he’d expected. Initially Draco had simply stayed at the manor and invited his friends over one by one. He’d spent days with them swapping stories, listening to them cry and exclaim how happy they were that he was alive, and pouring copious amounts of tea before he’d had to leave home. Talking to Gringotts was a necessity, he needed to work out if he would have access to the Malfoy family vaults or if he needed to get a job.

What had followed was an excruciating trip through Diagon Alley, carrying a terrified Orion on one hip, pushing his way through a crowd of people who all wanted to tell him how inspiring and brave he was. It had only ended when Harry and Neville arrived and flanked him, glaring at anyone who tried to approach.

At the end of the trip Draco had collapsed into a couch in the Manor while Harry and Neville flopped onto another. He’d summoned a house-elf, asked for drinks, turned to Harry and said:

“You really are a saint for putting up with all of that all these years”

 The other boy had laughed and it had devolved into sharing mocking stories about their unwanted fame.

As he got up to floo out Harry turned to Draco and said: “I’ve learnt that it’s better if you don’t go in public alone”

Over the next few years it became a routine. Before going out in public their group of war famous heros would floo each other and arrange to go together in groups of two or three or five or seven The others understood - Harry with his everything, Neville with his snake, Ginny with her revolution, Hermione and Ron with their year on the run, Luna with her time as a political prisoner - with their very lives suddenly and unexpectedly a commodity. They protected each other and stood together against the rest of the world.

Sometimes Draco would invite Pansy Parkinson or Blaise Zabini to accompany him instead. They’d both arrived the manor soon after his return, full of tearful apologies for past behaviour and a fervent desire to rekindle their childhood friendships from “before this whole mess started.” It was nice, being with them. Unlike the Gryffindors (and Luna) they didn’t believe he’d done anything particularly brave or noble. In fact Blaise had declared him an honorary Slytherin “with self-preservation instincts like those, you’d have been our prince!”

In between everything, Draco studied. There was no real reason for him to do so but he wanted desperately to have more than a fourth year education. He wanted Orion to know that education was important and he wanted to have the future he’d left the muggle world for.

Not that he’d completely left. Every month he’d return to that little village in Scotland for a weekend visit. He’d help out at the pub and talk with everyone who visited while he was there. He brought Orion with him to visit the muggle children he’d grown up with as often as he could. Then, one year, when the staid figure of Minerva McGonnagal appeared and asked to speak with the Whittakers about their son, Draco was able to take them aside after and say:

“You welcomed me to your world all those years ago, let me welcome you to mine”

 

**Author's Note:**

> In this AU war breaks out a couple of months into 1997 when Dumbledore dies of Horcrux causes. The war takes a bit longer and after Voldemorts death it takes a while to die down. Hence the reason I said the war lasted four years.


End file.
